Mean Girls 2
by SazzieCignet
Summary: Zoe is the new girl and Ness is an ex-popular girl. The two of them are a best-friendship made in heaven, but as soon as Zoe lands a date with the hot Tommy Baxter, the Plastics set out to ruin everything. Are best friends really forever?
1. Chapter 1

"_Up until I was sixteen, I've always been home educated. My parents liked to…I dunno…wrap me in their own form of protective bubblewrap, I guess .I suppose it comes from my mom; she was attacked once, when she was younger. A whole gang of girls and guys randomly jumped her on her way to school and just kept hitting her. She started having panic attacks, and as a result, had to drop out of junior high. Until she was seventeen, she was home schooled too. When she finally managed to make it into her last senior year and met my dad; that was her turning point in life. They've been together ever since. Now, mom is a successful businesswoman, who recently got a promotion, right here in Illinois, which means they've decided to mainstream school me at sixteen...And that brings me to North Shore High."_

I stared round the classroom, feeling completely vulnerable.

Spotting an empty seat, I grabbed it and tried to hold my head high and look confident. As I felt twenty pairs of eyes boring into me, confident was the last thing I felt.

The girl on the desk next to me leaned over. "Hey!" She whispered, "So you're the new girl? Everyone's talking about you!"

"Um...yeah, that's me." I grinned shyly.

"I'm Vanessa, but you can call me Ness... Or Nessa, I don't mind." She introduced.

"I'm Zoe." I smiled back, settling my bag on my desk.

There was a sudden slamming of the door. Everyone sat up straight, facing the front.

"Welcome back, everyone. I trust you all had a good summer?" The homeroom tutor addressed us all.

There were a few mumbles and sighs in reply. "Or not..." Nessa muttered.

"Now I'm sure you're aware of our new student by now?" The young woman looked right at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, hiding behind my fringe.

"This is Zoe Hooper, everyone." There was a whole chorus of welcomes, which surprised me. "I'm Ms. Sanders, and I'm your homeroom tutor for the remaining two years of High School!"

The boy on the other side of me waited until Ms. Sanders had turned her back, before cupping his mouth with his hands and whispering: "She might seem strict, but she's the most fun teacher in the world; we could get away with almost anything!"

I nodded shyly and smiled.

Ness rolled her eyes. "Hmm yeah Carson, like when she caught you and Courtney that one time?" She smiled sweetly. "If I remember, you got excluded for three weeks!"

The boy turned crimson and scratched his short dark hair, distractedly, and looked away.

The bell rang for the first lesson, and everyone filed out of the classroom. Looking at my timetable, I frowned.

"What do you have now?" Ness asked, looking over my shoulder.

"Double Biology with Mr Kowalski." I replied.

"Oooh, you're with me! I'll take you there!" Ness grinned excitedly, and grabbed my arm, leading me through the crowded hallways.

My heart was pounding as the other students stared at me or looked me up and down disapprovingly.

Ness seemed to notice; "Just ignore them. It's pure jealousy!" she muttered in my ear. "You'll get used to it soon, I did."

I didn't have the guts to tell her I'd been home-tutored up until now…

"Good morning class, please take a seat." Mr Kowalski called as everyone filed into the room.

I took the spare seat beside Ness.

"Ah, you must be Miss Hooper?" The teacher turned around and spotted me. I fidgeted, looking embarrassed.

"Zoe," I replied quietly.

"Well, welcome Zoe!" He smiled, handing me a brand new exercise book, "I try to make my lessons as fun as possible, so I hope you enjoy them!"

We spent the lesson labelling the names of groups of animals. Some of the mistakes people made had the class in fits. When the bell rang for first break, everyone groaned.

"I cannot believe Carson Wellor thinks a group of horses was a 'flock'!" Nessa shook her head, laughing. As we trooped into the cafeteria, we spotted Carson throwing a football at someone. The guy it narrowly missed turned around. "Hey, Wellor! Watch it!" He hurled the ball back across the canteen, hitting Carson on the side of the head.

Ness's eyes went wide, and her mouth made a perfect 'o' of dismay, before laughing and collecting her food from the vending machine.

"So, this Carson seems to be everywhere we go." I point out, "does he fancy you?"

Ness looked at me like I was crazy. "Uh…no!" She scoffed. "I'm not interested in a tool like him! No, Carson Weller is ultimately 'hot', ultimately a jock, ultimately popular, and _ultimately_…He's dating Courtney Carlisle!"

I frowned. "Who's that?"

At that moment, the cafeteria fell silent as three girls swanned in and stood by the entrance, hands on hips, smirking and scanning the hall critically. The blonde girl at the front shook her hair, and her eyes fell on me for a moment and she seemed to be staring right at me.

I looked away, and she led the other two girls towards Carson and his friends. She lunged at him, kissing him passionately.

"Ugh," Ness grimaced, "_That's _Courtney Carlisle! Ultimate bitch."

I nodded. She definitely looked it! The look she had given me sent a chill of what felt like fear down my spine.

Courtney was wearing a pink tight-fitting Juicy Couture top, and a black thigh-skimming pleated skirt. On her feet, she wore ridiculously high pink wedge heels.

There was a brunette girl with her, with what looked like an Italian tan, wearing a white vest top with a pink flower corsage, and a matching pink skirt and pink heels.

The redhead with them wore a light blue three-quarter sleeved top, and a black skirt with black platform heels.

They looked intimidatingly beautiful, and I suddenly felt even more vulnerable.

Ness followed my gaze. "The brunette girl is Erin Auditore. She's part Italian; apparently she's like, a distant relative of some assassin from the medieval era." Ness snorted disbelievingly as she said this, "And the redhead is Tara Bell. She claims to have slept with a college student last year, when she was a junior. Each one of those three sluts are majorly rich!"

"You seem to know a lot about them." I comment, taking a bite of my chocolate bar.

"I used to be one of them." Ness replied, matter-of-factly.

My eyes widen.

"Yep, back in the day when they were all nice…er!" She huffed.

"So…what happened?" I press.

"I wasn't pretty or rich enough." Nessa screwed up her empty chip packet. "Or enough of a backstabbing bitch." She rose to her feet and waited for me to finish my food, before linking arms with me and walking through the hallways.

We arrived at the girls' bathrooms, and once we were done, Ness stood at the mirrors, rummaging through her bag, before pulling out what looked like a pencil case. She revealed a bottle of foundation and started applying it, before moving on to her mascara. She handed me the case.

"Want to borrow some?"

I took the case and started applying the makeup like I'd seen Ness do. Glancing into the mirror, I thought I'd done a pretty good job. She seemed to think so too, as she grinned and said "You look awesome!"

The bell rang then. Ness linked arms with me and led me through the corridors to next lesson.


	2. Chapter 2

Ness and I turned up a matter of seconds late to Geography, but the young red-haired teacher didn't seem to mind too much. She smiled broadly at everyone as we took our seats.

"Who the heck is she?" Ness whispered.

I shrugged. The rest of the class whispered amongst themselves.

The young woman cleared her throat.

"Hi there, I'm Mrs Samuels." She introduced, "as you probably guessed, I'm a new teacher in this school." She looked at me.

"And by the looks of it, you must be our new student. Zoe Hooper, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah, how did you know?"

She smiled to herself. "I was a new student once too…right here in North Shore. You have the nervous, kinda lost look about you that I once had."

Mrs Samuels started handing out pieces of paper around the class. "I want you to write down somewhere you've been on vacation this Summer, or even another state, and tell me all about it. Anything about it that you like…But be clean please, guys, okay?"

Erin was sitting in the front row. She raised her hand. "Uhh, Mrs Samuels? This isn't really much of a Geography lesson for sixteen to seventeen year olds. This is Kindergarten stuff!"

Mrs Samuels walked slowly to Erin's desk.

"You must be Erin Auditore?" She smiled sweetly. "Well don't worry Erin, there's more to the lesson than this. The first half an hour you will be writing these, yes. The last half an hour will be a little different. But I'll explain that later. Now, do as you're told. Okay?"

"Yes Ma'am." Erin put her head down and got to work. I exchanged glances with Ness who was biting back a smile of amusement.

I started writing about the holiday my parents took me on just before we'd moved; we'd used some leftover money from selling our house in Florida, and gone to Turkey in Eastern Europe, to a place called Altinkum. I described the beaches, the shops selling fake designer clothing and the vast varieties of bright jewellery. I described how hot it was, and the hotel we stayed in.

Eventually Mrs Samuels spoke: "Half an hour's up everyone. Who'd like to share their work with the class?"

Nobody put their hand up.

"Fine. How about you, Zoe? New girl first." She smiled at me.

I suddenly felt vulnerable again. Why was she picking on me?

Nevertheless, I stood up but stayed at my table, reading out what I'd written.

"Good. Very good; Sounds nice out there…Any idea what the temperature was?" Mrs Samuels asked.

I exhaled, thinking. "Umm…Forty degrees?" I guessed.

"And would that be celcius or farenheit?" The young teacher asked me.

"Celcius." I confirmed.

"Okay…now if we were to convert that into farenheit, what would it be?"

I fell silent, thinking for a while. I couldn't remember the equation to convert temperatures. I looked desperately at Ness who bit her lip and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling.

"No?" Mrs Samuels pushed, "Okay, don't panic. I'll write it on the board." She picked up a red board marker and wrote out the equation: '40°C X 9/5 +32 = '

"Can you figure that out if we break it down?"

I nodded.

"Okay, so 40 multiplied by 9 is…?" She began.

"360," I answered,

"Good, then divide that by 5 and you get…?"

"72."

"Great! Lastly, add on 32 and your answer is…?"

"104!" I grinned.

"Excellent! So you were sat out in Turkey in 104 degrees farenheit, while I was sat here finishing my teacher training in boring old Illinois!" Mrs Samuels chuckled.

A ripple of laughter erupted from the class.

"So if you add that somewhere to your worksheet, then you can get started on researching some more about Turkey on Wikipedia for your work today, as can everyone else when they've finished their temperature equation." Mrs Samuels pointed to the Apple computers at the back of class. "But shh, don't tell the other teachers!" She winked.

The bell rang at the end of class, and we all filed out.

"You did very well today, Miss Hooper." Mrs Samuels collared me on the way out, "Mrs Duvall will be pleased with your mathematics!"

I turned to Ness. "Who's Mrs Duvall?"

"Oh, she's the headmaster's wife. She used to be called Ms Norbury years ago. My cousin Chelsie had her as a calculus teacher in her senior year." Ness replied, taking a swig of water from her bottle.

I followed suit; it was boiling that day. We walked into the last lesson before lunch, groaning with fatigue.

"Wake me when the day is over!" Ness joked, flopping down onto a bench in the girls' locker room.

It was lunchtime.

Also, it turns out I'm very good at soccer, which I never knew. We had to endure an hour of it with our gym teacher, Ms Allen, who was bright, friendly and understanding, but also very competitive!

"I am beat!" I yawned, picking up a lunch tray and selecting my food.

The food at North Shore was great, as I discovered, and there was something for everyone, as I noticed when my eyes did a quick scan of the tables.

It was at this point that I realised the cliques were made very apparent in the cafeteria.

I spotted Courtney and her friends picking at pasta salad and reading the backs of smoothie cartons for calorific content…I also spotted the jocks tucking into meaty lunches and drinking energy drinks.

Ness and I had selected cheesy fries and some other snacks, and took a seat at a spare table. Courtney got to her feet and glided over.

"Hey," she said with a fake Barbie grin, looking at me and ignoring Ness. "You're the new girl…Zoe Hooper right? I'm Courtney, welcome to North Shore!" She covered her hand in sanitizing gel and held her hand out for me to shake.

I frowned and looked down at her hand wondering why she felt the need to sanitise herself before shaking my hand. I accepted however, to be polite.

Ness snorted. "Hand gel?" She rolled her eyes. "And what are you, the Welcoming Committee? Since when have you cared about a new student?"

Courtney glared at her. "For your information, _Vanessa, _I'm being polite."

"That's a first." Ness muttered, putting a French fry in her mouth.

"You may want to reconsider your friendship groups, Zoe. There are people here who are, well, let's just say, not worth your time. You're really pretty and can do so much better." Courtney looked pointedly at Ness.

"Are you done?" Ness looked up at her, "And you say she's pretty, is that the only reason you came over here? Half the girls in this school are pretty but you don't care. You just can't stand the fact she's hanging out with me, can you?"

Courtney looked expectantly at me, hands on her hips.

I swallowed hard.

"I think I can figure out who my real friends are. Thanks though." I went back to my fries and looked up ahead of me.

Courtney hovered for a few seconds before huffing and storming back to her table, animatedly discussing what had just happened with her little 'following'.

I rolled my eyes, and Ness just scoffed.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen," she said, "Is a perfect example of a high maintenance witch!"


End file.
